Good Is Better Than Perfect
Perfectionism is the enemy of progress. For much of my career—in fact, until only a few years ago—I wouldn’t move forward with a task or project until every detail was just right. Flawless. Of course, that was a ridiculous expectation to have—there’s no such thing as perfect or flawless, especially in an industry where there are many ways to go about accomplishing something. But that illusion of perfection as something attainable kept me from moving forward on many things when I could have been making progress and growing my business even more.
The truth is that, in most cases, good is actually better than perfect. Why? Because good is something possible to accomplish, while perfect is something you can strive for as much as you like, but you’ll never reach it.
Many entrepreneurs I know suffer from it, and it can lead to all sorts of delays in their work and goals never reached. For example, many entrepreneurs I know have been talking for years about how they want to write a book, but they never get around to actually finishing a full draft, let alone publishing it. Why? Because they have some vision in their head of a perfect book that can’t exist—it’s a nebulous idea, and no solid, realized form of it will ever live up to that perfect, nonexistent version in their head.
Ultimately, perfectionism is rooted in insecurity. We worry about how our work will reflect on us and hold ourselves to unachievable high standards, but we must overcome this tendency in order to grow.
Delegating Can Help You Overcome Perfectionism
One way I see perfectionism commonly manifest in entrepreneurs is in their hesitancy to delegate important tasks. They want something done perfectly, so they insist on doing it themselves, but they never get around to it.
For many years, I only had a one-page website for my digital marketing business because I wanted a perfect website but never got around to building one myself. It wasn’t until I hired a team to handle the job that I was able to get out of my own way and create a real website. Of course, I gave input along the way, but I had to keep myself from getting bogged down in the details and trust the people I hired to do a good job—not a perfect job, because that’s impossible—but a good one.
The reason I had trouble delegating this was because I didn’t know what I really wanted other than just a “perfect website.” I had to let go of control and hand over my vision to be interpreted by someone else. In doing so, I learned to let go of some of my perfectionism, and I also started to see significant growth from my website.
You have to become comfortable with allowing other people to do things differently than you. Often, the results will be better than what you could have accomplished on your own when you let others use their strengths and expertise without getting in their way.
Assess Your Tasks and Skills
Chances are you already delegate to some extent, but it’s important to continue to revisit what’s on your plate and assess which tasks are worth your time. Many entrepreneurs have a habit of taking on tasks that could be done by someone else, motivated by perfectionism. Make a list of the tasks you perform each week and see what can be handed off to someone else.
It’s also important to assess your skills alongside your tasks. First, are the tasks worthy of your level of expertise? If you wouldn’t pay someone your salary to do the task, give it to someone else. This includes things like email and calendar management, and it’s why I firmly believe in the value of an assistant.
Second, are you really the best person to perform the task? In many cases, someone who specializes in that skillset may be better suited to perform it than you are. For example, perhaps you’re a decent writer, but hiring a professional writer or editor to handle writing your marketing content could be much more effective than writing it yourself. The same goes for many other types of skilled labor, just like my website story.
This may take some practice to get comfortable with, but it’s important to recognize the value of the expertise and talent each person on your team brings to a project and to trust their judgment.
Don’t Be a Bottleneck
Once you’ve delegated a task, you must get out of their way. It doesn’t do any good to assign a task and then micromanage every aspect—you’ll only hinder its progress. That means you have to allow your team to fail, give them the tools to fix the problem, and try again. This can be the ultimate test of giving up perfectionism, because it directly tests what you’re afraid of, but it’s an important step in growing your business because you have to be able to trust your team to solve problems without you in order to scale.
Finally, don’t belabor the approval process. This is where many entrepreneurs fall back into perfectionism and hinder the progress of their team. Many projects get stalled in the approval phase, creating unnecessary bottlenecks in workflow. When a project is handed over to you for review, you must be willing to allow some imperfection. The more changes you make at the approval stage, the more you delay progress.
If you have projects or goals you’re putting off due to perfectionism, take this as the prompt you need to move forward. Start delegating and don’t let perfectionism hold you back from growth.
